"Surprisingly trenchant commentary." Come on! I like delicate toilet paper, but why the delicacy talking about toilet paper? What, exactly, is the commentary? I assumed it was: American currency is something you may as well wipe your ass with. But then I thought the idea was: Uh, oh, we just pooped ourselves.

Maybe you're wracking your brain for a way to use the old "Don't Squeeze the Charmin" slogan, but that was the 1960s. The current slogans — if I am to believe the Charmin Wikipedia page — are: "Enjoy the Charmin experience" and "Enjoy The Go." Enjoy the go?! Put that on the coin. Hell, make that the national motto. "In God We Trust" is getting old. It's divisive. And, frankly, it's unfair to God.

"Enjoy the Go"... I looked it up to see how they were playing this slogan in the commercials:

The relief. The calm. The clean. The comfort.

See? That's the way you'll feel after that $1-trillion is deposited in the toilet bank. This image evokes Sigmund Freud:

Freud suggested that children in the anal stage of development regard the release of their feces as a gift to the parent — a gift that can be given or withheld. Children will release the feces if given sufficient love and withhold them if not. In Freudian thought, fecal matter becomes a type of currency in the parent-child relationship, which can be withheld or dispensed, thus giving the child a sense of control. The word currency is appropriate in this context; Freud assumed that the human unconscious makes a symbolic equation between feces and money. In a 1911 paper on dreams in folklore, he noted that according to ancient Eastern mythology, “gold is the excrement of hell” (Freud & Oppenheim, 1911/1958, p. 157).

Hell!

(I'm riffing on the toilet paper topic topic Meade introduced late last night. That was Meade — did you notice? — not me.)

I never understood why Charmin used bears as an advertising mascot for their toilet paper. My first thought upon seeing them was to think that it had something to do with the phrase "does a bear shit in the woods?". I've always assumed that the unspoken advertisement is: "Yes! Bears do shit in the woods— and they wipe their asses with Charmin!"

I for one encourage the Treasury to soften and perfume the greenback dollars giving them real usefulness beyond the promise to repay us with some more just like that. It would make sense to add a shrinkage factor in water. And also they must be made bio-degradable if kept in secret places.

Cash Free Commerce this way cometh. Oh yeah, that's the real "Mark of the Beast."

The bears poop in my backyard, but no evidence is left behind to suggest that they use Charmin.

Bear poop is some of the most dense, stinky stuff you've ever seen. Bears, I'm sorry to inform you, stink to high heaven. I've got a sow who sits on my front porch and scratches her back on one of the corner posts.

I received a one buck bill as change this morning that had been inscribed with the message You are the 99% -- Fight the Plutocracy! Yesterday, I heard a great song by Ry Cooder with the punchline... No banker left behind!

I drink a lot of coffee in the morning, so the morning visit to the bathroom is indeed a blessed event. But, I don't use Charmin. Generic Sam's Club.

And that is seriously Charmin's current tagline!? (I don't watch TV other than Netflix and don't listen to radio, so I see surprisingly little advertising.) The idea is to tell you that by using Charmin you will come to savor your trip to the john?! Hilarious!

"Kenneth Burke had lots of lit crit equating gold and feces, starting I guess with Timon of Athens in Language as Symbolic Action"

When God commanded the destruction of the Golden calf, It was ground to a powder and put in the drinking water, and the Israelites were then forced to drink it.I suppose this made the figurative literal. Clearly the intent was to make the gold non-recoverable.

I could go for a very long time before missing the hare brained analysis of that old coke sniffer, Freud. Has there ever been a pile of utter crap that lasted so far past its sell by date? I could think of a couple I suppose but not many.

This is probably prompted by a Stephen Colbert bit the other day in which he proposed putting the Charmin bear on the $1 Trillion coin because whoever pulled that idea out of his ass will need the comfort.

Great ad for Charmin, proving once again where to find the most creative stuff on TV. Note that it is targeted at women -- the voice, the emphasis on coffee and its effects (for which men won't need the Charmin), "the clean, the comfort".

The mercantile reason to target women is obvious enough (they make those purchases, mostly), but that's hardly the only reason. Clean and comfort = dainty and delicate, the perfect little homemaker. The perky, modern-woman voice -- hello, Julia, feeling all clean and comfortable after the go? -- is an odd fit for a lady just looking for Mr. Clean. The dissonance of the snarky, jokey text and visuals set against the Ozzie and Harriet image holding it all together is really terrific.

The Charmin $$$trillion$$$ coin doesn't have any of that dissonance -- just kind of flat, in a blah surely-you-get-the-joke way.

Well, like I said the other day, I don't think a trillion dollar coin is something elitists have pulled "out of their ass" (notwithstanding people crazy clueless about the importance of distinguishing sodomy from sex are always looking for simple answers about things vaguely like sodomy because what constitutes sodomy is simple, a matter of one hole versus another). True, because elites tend to think it's lack of the niceties afforded by wealth that causes people to get screwed up, they are mostly clueless about sodomy, which can make them rather crazy. However, actually not much about monetary policy is reminiscent of sodomy, so in fact the sophistication of elites probably causes them to underestimate the possibilities of simple monetary and economic solutions. They probably figure issuing a coin would be like stripping a valuable antique of an authentic ratchet finish to fix it's damaged finish, which simple solution they may well feel like doing because the finish is ratchet (like sodomy), but which from sophistication they don't do because they know it's foolish (and diminishes the value of the furniture).

Evil is another matter. If one believes that fundamentally the cause of the financial crisis is that rich people are being evil, well, evil has much to do with sodomy, and so that's the sort of simple idea that elitists would tend to pull out of their asses. That would tend to be more an academic-elite position than a wealthy-elite position, because wealthy people having had all the advantages money can afford--which extend well beyond education to "advantages" like going to operas often and consorting with the "right" sorts at the exclusive clubs--it is hard for wealthy elitists to imagine rich people as evil. Not that greed among the elites isn't a significant cause of our economic problems, just like selfishness is a cause of problems everywhere, I just think that their crazy cluelessness is probably a greater problem.

I've never much cared for the Charmin bear. It reminds me too much of the "Bear in the Big Blue House" bear, which has always struck me emotionally as sinister and pro-sodomy somehow (I suppose partly because it's long forward neck is somewhat penis-resembling).